by Neal Asher
"You need a break. When was the last time you left Main?"
Entirely unexpected. She looked at him in puzzlement. Leave Corisanthe Main?
Gneiss leaned back. "I have recommended you for a position outside the station. You'll still be working for me, but must report directly to the Oversight Committee. We need somebody of your…potential, in at the ground level."
What was he talking about?
He continued flatly, "We don't know when this individual is going to arrive but we definitely need an established Combine representative in this matter."
"Representative?"
"We need a representative in place when this Polity Consul Assessor arrives."
"Oh." She recollected hearing something about that, but could not summon any emotional response. Gazing down at her grubby clothing and the dirt under her fingernails, she said, "I'm a mess." The words seemed to cause a moment of disconnection, a lessening of the intensity between them. The moment became almost humanised.
"Do you think I don't understand?" Gneiss stood, paced over to his workstation and picked up a console. "It gets to some people. Dalepan said you were sensitive to it."
"To what?"
He gestured about him with the console he held. "All of it: bleed-over, the oppressive claustrophobic atmosphere, the downright strangeness…Stand up now."
Yishna got up, realising with some disgust that she had not washed her hair for longer than she cared to think about.
"Yishna Strone, you will be the Orbital Combine representative designated to meet the Consul Assessor when he arrives. Get yourself cleaned up and your belongings packed. You leave on the next shuttle heading over to Corisanthe II, and from there you will take the next landing craft groundside, where you will be taken to meet Chairman Abel Duras."
"But why?" Yishna could not understand why he had chosen her. Surely he, as well as many others, must consider her a burnout.
"I have every confidence in you, and I know the power of your mind. It goes away, you know, once you are back in the real world." He seemed almost wistful, his strange eyes gazing beyond Yishna to some other place or state of being.
He was right. Aboard the shuttle, as it headed for Corisanthe II, Yishna felt as if she was pulling out into sunlight from underneath some bleak shadow. And in her mind suddenly flashed an image of Gneiss, black and toad-like, with Corisanthe Main clutching him like a fist.
— Retroact 16 Ends—
9
The War properly ended when Fleet employed its gravity disruptors against the remaining Brumallian warships and their orbital support industry. The near-genocide committed thereafter from orbit and through the deployment of ground troops underlined that ending of conflict in so sordid a fashion as to begin a major shift in Sudorian public opinion. There are only so many broadcasts about Brumallians being conquered that any civilised human being can cheer. We grew uneasy at seeing images of yet more quofarl being incinerated in tunnels or disc-gunned into bloody fragments in forests. Seeing ordinary Brumallians trapped on shores or river-banks, and then shelled into non-existence, increased that unease. "They won't surrender," we were assured. "We have no choice," said those GDS troops and Fleet marines, their expressions haunted. We grew sick of seeing piles of worm-riddled corpses being pushed by bulldozers into pits. We grew increasingly suspicious of Fleet's censorship of certain broadcasts. But, even then, many of us had grown desensitised to the images, and the real turn in public opinion was instigated by a simple audio recording that was smuggled out. There are few of us, as a result, who have not heard the terrible sound that ensued after phosphor bombs were dropped into an underground Brumallian town with a population of ten thousand. It was a sound often reproduced in the protest songs that followed; that concerted shrieking rose like a symphony of Hell recorded from the Pit.
— Uskaron
McCrooger
The quofarl first surrounded us, then closed in. Two grabbed Rhodane, thrust her down on the floor and pinned her there. As two grabbed me, I allowed them to shove me to the floor, and as I went down I felt something rip across the back of my hand, probably the edge of a quofarl carapace. They searched us, thoroughly, then grudgingly hauled us back to our feet.
"What's going on?" Rhodane finally demanded.
The quofarl responded only with an irritated clicking of their mandibles, and aimed their weapons more deliberately. Now Rhodane began to look really worried as she observed other Brumallians spreading out through the surrounding area. It was not just quofarl arriving, but others laden with equipment. Abruptly lights set into the walls came on, and the hum of power permeated the air. Some of the biomechanisms around the bases of the ships began showing signs of movement, the pumps accelerated, and light and heat began to emit from the ships themselves.
"Are you picking up anything from the Consensus?" I asked.
"Something is definitely going on," she said.
"No shit?"
She held up her hand, listening intently to the chatter of the other Brumallians here. I guessed she was also trying to interpret the chemical messages in the air.
"Perhaps you should never have brought me down here?" I suggested.
"It's not that. Something about Fleet…and an evacuation. I think the Speakers—"
The quofarl abruptly parted.
"Come—"
"— with—"
"— us," they said, and a couple of the hand gestures I read indicated: Move now, urgency, danger, outsiders, protect citizens. The butt of a weapon smacked into my back and I started to turn in anger, but Rhodane grabbed my arm and began towing me after the two quofarl who led off. "Keep moving, don't question their orders, don't disobey—and don't do anything stupid."
"Danger?"
"They are confused and scared, so will kill us at the slightest provocation. There's a threat to—"
"Silence," ordered the quofarl, and that's what they got.
They did not take us out the way we had come in, but into a tunnel to one side, then at its end through two sets of heavily armoured doors and out into the open air. The ground lay hard underfoot—mud frozen solid and blistered with shell-ice—and snakes of aubergine cloud occluded the starry firmament. To my right I observed more quofarl shoving ahead of them another figure in an envirosuit like Rhodane's. I also noticed that one of them carried a similar figure slung over his shoulder. So it was not just us, and I guessed this was some instinctive or preplanned reaction to threat.
Finally they brought us to the edge of a canal where a massive cargo barge sat on the steadily freezing water. By now Rhodane had put on her helmet and gloves, so looked little different to the other Sudorians being forced into the barge. Typical: round up the aliens and intern them. I guessed some things would never change.
It was crowded inside, people sitting with their backs against the outer walls or scattered in groups about the cold alloy floor. I estimated there to be at least 200 people gathered here. Frightened chatter filled the area, but it always dropped to silence when the doors opened and more people were shoved inside. I supposed these Sudorians were used to dealing with Brumallians and well aware of how dangerous quofarl could be, but I also wondered how many had died already, for the one I had seen being carried over a shoulder had not been brought here with us but taken towards a barge moored further along the canal. Standing head and shoulders above everyone else, blatantly not wearing protective gear and evidently neither Sudorian nor Brumallian, I became the focus of much attention.
"What's he?"
"That Consul Assessor from the Polity."
"I thought he was dead."
"Looks very much alive to me."
"Is he anything to do with this?"
Finally seals thunked down in the doors, fans started running, and the temperature began to rise. After a little while someone called out, "It's safe!" and people began to remove their atmosphere helmets.
"Have you any idea what's going on?" I asked Rhodane once she had taken off her own.
"Not yet." She raised her hand in greeting to a woman just across the room, who began to make her way towards us. "Shleera will know."
"So this is him." Shleera looked me up and down, and I studied her in return. I realised that her bulk was not all due to her envirosuit. She was overweight and wore spectacles—both of which were never seen in the Polity unless as a matter of choice.
"It certainly is," Rhodane replied. "Shleera, meet the Polity Consul Assessor, David McCrooger."
"I would rather have met you under different circumstances," she said.
"Do you know what's going on here?" Rhodane asked.
"Fleet," Shleera spat. "What do you think?"
"Have they attacked?"
"Not yet." Shleera glanced around at those who were gathering closer. "Consensus Speakers have been in contact to deny any responsibility for the missile strike on his ship" — she gestured at me. "They investigated and retrieved enough evidence to refute Brumallian involvement but, before they could pass it on, Fleet cut communications. Now Fleet are pulling their personnel out of the ground bases."
"I have heard nothing about this." Rhodane was looking puzzled.
"Perhaps you're not as close to them as you would like to think," Shleera replied.
"We did hear something about an evacuation," I interjected.
"Evacuation," Shleera shook her head. "That's not the ground bases, that's Vertical Vienna. It started in secret shortly after the missile strike, and is now being conducted with some urgency."
"Fleet wouldn't dare," said Rhodane.
"Parliament has allowed Fleet to take the caps off its guns. You do realise the Carmel space station is working again?"
"Shit," said Rhodane, or rather used some nearly untranslatable Sudorian equivalent.
"Vertical Vienna?" I enquired.
She glanced at me. "The subterranean city nearest to the missile's launch site."
I considered that, and found my hand straying to the tiger pendant on my chest. After a moment I coughed into my hand and said, "Tigger."
Rhodane looked at me, "What?"
"Nothing. 'Tigger' is just an expletive in my language." The pendant moved against my chest. I casually took hold of it, and looped the chain off over my head. As soon as Rhodane returned her attention to Shleera, I opened my fist and glanced down to see that the miniature tiger now held one paw over its eyes and seemed to be wincing.
"You were saying Fleet would destroy an entire city in retaliation?" I asked.
"They'll call it a military excision," Rhodane replied. "And it will all look very neat in the media, because all anyone will ever see is a hole in the ground."
"Or not even that," Shleera added, "if they use a gravtech weapon."
"So you're saying that Fleet may very soon be launching an orbital strike against the Brumallian city called Vertical Vienna?"
The pendant squirmed in my fist. Rhodane gazed at me with a blank expression, but Shleera's look gave me the distinct impression she thought me rather thick.
"Yes, that's very likely," said Rhodane, before Shleera could comment.
I raised my fist, rubbing one eyebrow with my forefinger, opened my hand as I lowered it, then quickly closed it again. The tiger lay on its back in my palm, paws in the air and eyes crossed. In my own tongue—the language spoken on Spatterjay for a millennium and on Earth for a similar period before that—I said, "Tigger, stop those fuckers from destroying that city. Use any means necessary."
"What was that?" asked Rhodane.
"I believe in a supreme being," I replied, "and I just prayed for intercession."
— RETROACT 17—
Tigger —in the Past
With his two halves joined together Tigger gazed down at the river, tracking further along its course to where it poured into the fifty-yard-wide mouth of the underground pipe. Seismic mapping had shown only two breaks in the pipe, where water seeped into the surrounding limestone and sought out its previous natural routes from the time before the Brumallians had diverted it to New Pavonis—a city named after one on Mars that lay in the shadow of Pavonis Mons. New Pavonis had been one of Brumal's largest underground cities, its population topping five million.
"Okay, graverobber," said Tigger to himself, "let's take a look."
Still remaining combined, because for this task he felt he would require all of himself, Tigger descended alongside the massive waterfall into misty depths, tracking his progress by radar once the light from above ground began to fail. Two hundred yards down, the pipe began to curve, the waterfall becoming a torrent that gradually filled the entire pipe as it narrowed. He submerged, initiating sonar and switching on his headlights. Here he came upon the first rupture; the pipe being sheared through and displaced to one side by half its width. Some water had flowed into crevices throughout the surrounding rock, gradually widening its escape route, but not enough to make a visible difference to the main torrent. Five hundred yards further on, the pipe began to widen again, to level out, and here the flow hit a series of generator stations and baffles. Emerging from the main flow of water again, he kept his lights on as he cruised along above the surface. Some Brumallians had escaped from here through exit tunnels leading to the surface. Many others had not. After their exit tunnels were blocked by collapses they tried to head downstream back towards their city. Only death had lain in that direction.
Some 300 yards beyond the last generating station, Tigger entered a wide slice through the rock, where only a few remnants of the pipe remained, the river now spreading out into a wide shallow flow that disappeared off into darkness on either side. Ahead, he eventually came upon a continuation of the pipe again, bone-dry and high up in a rock face. He entered this and cruised along to where the pipe terminated in a canal bed, now roofed with stone where there had been open space. Either side of him there had once been a glittering grotto of underground tower blocks, homes, factories, shops: all the panoply of human civilisation. After the attack it had all been compressed down to a layer about three feet thick in which the humans had become thoroughly melded with their civilisation. He passed a barge lying on the canal bed, disconnected skeletons scattered all around it, the distorted skulls of Brumallians presenting nightmare mandibles. Further skeletons revealed broken bones. He wondered if they had died of their injuries here or drowned before the water drained away. There was no way of telling without some forensic work, and that was not what he was here for.
Tracking through the canal system the drone eventually reached a point where a crevice opened above him. Closer now to this feature he had often scanned from above, he scanned it again to confirm his supposition. Tigger mapped the weaknesses in the rock then after a short while rose to a preselected point, before extending a metallic protuberance from his body which flashed and emitted the turquoise glare of a particle beam. After a few seconds the light went out. He withdrew the device then in its place extended a tentacle holding a brushed aluminium cylinder which he inserted deep into the glowing hole he had just cut. Then he dropped back down to the canal level and sped off a mile away before sending the detonation signal.
Even at that range the blast wave knocked Tigger back a hundred feet. After a cautious pause he advanced again, ultrasound scanning the rock above him for weaknesses. Finally returning to his original position he peered at the huge slab of rock that had dropped down into the canal. Above this the crevice was now much wider, opening up into darkness above. He rose up into this gap, testing the air with his sensors. It smelled foul, still full of organics, still redolent with the stench of death after all this time.
Even though much of the section of city above—the ceiling of this section—had fallen, still some buildings had remained standing. Giant boulders and tons of rubble jammed the rest of the tubular city above. It was a shame the populace trapped here had not thought to drill downward rather than up, for then they might have escaped via the route Tigger had entered.
The dead were stacked in their tens of thousand
s along the course of a dried-up canal. At first the survivors had filled the ground in above the corpses, then—perhaps as water, energy and hope ran low—they ceased to cover them. Tigger observed the heavy drill they had been using to cut right through one wall to one of the big vent pipes—to their minds their nearest possibility of escape—and did not have to speculate on how they must have felt upon finding that the pipe itself had simply disappeared, closed up by the massive quakes caused here. He cruised along, studying the temporary accommodations the survivors had made for themselves, the equipment salvaged, the food supplies—soon emptied—the attempts at making water condensers and air scrubbers. And the little huddles of bones representing those who had survived long enough so as not to have anyone else to throw their corpses in the canal.
After a few hours of surveying this mass grave, and recording all of it, he eventually headed over to one particular building, whose upper floors had been crushed by the falling ceiling but whose bottom two levels remained intact. He entered the foyer through a space for wide doors that now lay some distance behind him, having been blown off by the compressive effect of so many levels above being crushed. After scanning for a little while he settled to the floor and detached his tiger half from his sphere. This tiger form was small enough to negotiate the narrow corridors inside. There were bones evident here, but none belonging to the survivors. He supposed the place had not been considered safe. Eventually he entered a room where, surprisingly, a mummified and perfectly intact Brumallian sat in a chair by one of the cylindrical storage containers. No clue as to how he had died, until scanning revealed the effects of massive compressive shock. Strange how this particular container was the one Tigger sought.
The drone did not need to search now, for he understood precisely how Brumallians filed things. He reached up with one extended claw and flipped open a quadrant drawer. From this he removed a single recording disk. He slipped this into his mouth, shunted it through, played it inside himself, and confirmed that he had what he wanted.
